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Hybrid View

A Planisphere of Her Majesty's Martian Colony

This was my entry in the May/June 2011 Light Challenge. Most of the work was done in Inkscape, including the paper texture and other effects. I also used QuantumGIS for tracing out the major landforms and projecting them, gdalwarp to reproject the DEM I used as a basis for the map, The GIMP for various minor tasks like resizing files and adding/removing alpha channels, and some custom programs written in Ruby to generate the graticules and the orbits.

My data sources were a Martian DEM from NASA, and various data (Tilts, radii, orbit eccentricities and other orbital parameters, and the math for the orbit and projection calculations) from Wikipedia, along with photos of Phobos and Deimos. The map is not meant to be an entirely realistic, representation of Mars, even ignoring the canals, reservoirs, cities, and railways, but the locations of major landforms is correct.

The fictional context is that the Victorians have developed an effectively reactionless drive that pushes against the "Luminipherous Æther" and have used it to colonise Mars, where they are engaged in some form of terraforming project using canals to redirect water. Most of the city names are anachronistic jokes.

Well Aereographically, and only roughly. I simplified the topography a great deal since I really didn't want to even consider doing hachuring over the entire surface. Just giving an idea of the boundary between Tharsis, the southern highlands, and the northern lowlands seems like enough.

Thanks for the compliments all. I'm definitely rather proud of it myself, I'm working on making it look good when printed at Ledger size so I can hang it on my wall.

Any criticisms? In the voting thread Ascension felt the colours were too muted. That was my goal as I don't particularly like overly bright saturated colours but it's good to get some critical feedback.

If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)